Act III/Scene I

Plot
- In the woods, Bottom gathers Quince, Snout, Starveling and Snug to start the second rehearsal.

- As they are about to start the rehearsal, though, they think that some parts of the play (like Pyramus killing himself with a sword and the roaring lion) might frighten the ladies.

 - In order to prevent this from happening, they decide to write a prologue for each frightening scene that denies the reality of these. According to this, Pyramus will say that he is actually Bottom and the lion will take his clothes off and say that he is no lion but just a man (who is Snug).

- As Bottom, Quince and Snout try to base the play entirely on its story, they try to find solutions for issues that are nearly impossible to solve properly (like there being no moonlight or a wall not being able to be carried between Pyramus and Thisby). To solve these problems, they think that a human must play as the moonlight and the other must play as the wall (With proper clothing, of course. These characters aren’t that crazy).

- At the beginning of the rehearsal, Puck secretly enters the scene. He thinks that he might watch the play, or he might even be an actor of it if he sees any reason to do so (as in “What, a play toward? I’ll be an auditor, / An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause”).

 - In the rehearsal, Bottom enters his first scene as Pyramus and has no problem. But after he exits the scene, Puck turns his head into a donkey’s (The fact that Puck made this is hinted in the line “ A stranger Pyramus, than e’er play’d here ”). When Quince sees that, he gets very shocked and tells the others too to go away from here. Bottom asks them what happened to him, and they reply by saying that he has been “ translated” (Old English?). Meanwhile, Puck says to himself that he will watch him everywhere.

- Bottom gets sad and thinks that his friends let him down to make him afraid. So, he starts to sing a song. Fortunately, Titania hears this and she thinks that it is a very beautiful song. And much more importantly, she loves him (an effect of the potion that had been dropped by Oberon into her eyes in Act II). She tells Bottom about this and says that he will stay in the woods, as her Fairies “shall fetch him jewels from the deep”. However, she also doesn’t seem to forget the fact that he is a mortal human, as she says “And I will purge your mortal grossness…”

 - Then, Titania calls her Fairies and tells them to take care of this “ gentle mortal ”. Titania does this so seriously that even Bottom enters the mood, as he starts to tell the fairies (who are Cobweb, Peaseblossom and Mustardseed) to “ have a better acquaintance on him ”.

- After Bottom learns the name of each Fairy, Titania tells the Fairies to lead him to her bower.